Production Note
Examination of Mobile Projection
Or about the Body Double of Kentaro Taki Ran Up Buildings
（日本語版はこちら）
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| photo by Haruka Hirano, YIN Yichen |
The second performance was in the residence area around MORI YU Gallery in Kyoto as the opening event of VIDEOS, 2015. The third one was in Shibuya as a participation program of the Interdisciplinary Art Festival Tokyo 15/16. The fourth was in Surabaya in Indonesia, the fifth was in the VIDEOFORMS2016 festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and the sixth was in Taipei International Artist Village, Taiwan(2016) and the seventh was in the AIKOT2019, Shikinejima, Tokyo.
Kentaro Taki and the other protagonists were on the projection images except for the first three performances. However, this time in Yokohama, I returned to the starting point where I projected an image of only myself who played to climb, jump, and run for 30 minutes.
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| "Come and Go"（2015）left, "V-climbing Highl Lines"(2015)right |
Usually, film or video performances in the room have limited movement because of the power supply or video input length, which was a problem. So, I always think about how it is possible to express something with the free movement of a projector. One day a high-performance mobile battery which was a handy one, was rolled out for necessary evacuation after a 3.11 earthquake disaster. This mobile battery contains a battery for motorcycles, it can convert charged power as 100V output, and that cost is low to charge mobile phones and laptop PC and get it easier than before. I found that I could use a 20W table projector for 30-40 minutes ca., and this made me hit upon the idea of mobile projection right away.
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| Instrument of Mobile Projection |
In the premiere performance in Kagurazaka, I made a 3-minute video with my acting just climbing up or running to the sides and put that footage into a laptop computer to play it as a loop. More than 10 people were announced at the gathering point, and also with the audience who passed thereby happenings, I, Kentaro TAKI started to move around to project video images on the facade of shops and walls without any rehearsal, sometimes I projected images on someone's back and I have done 30 minutes long pedestrian performance.
I learned later that when ancient Japan imported European iron-made magic lantern from the Netherlands and Belgium in the Edo era, some Japanese man created an original wooden magic lantern called Furo, and demonstrated it as an Edo Utsuchie projection theater play at nighttime. Edo Utsushie’s birthplace was Kagurazaka. Because of the customizing lighter and its gimmick of slides of the projector, the play of Edo Utsushie was developed differently and uniquely from Fantasmagoria, the Western magic lantern show. My idea was also just about downsized and mobility of both video projector and battery, and it brought me to hit upon the idea to go out and project human image on the wall. I felt some kind of fate that I did my premiere mobile projection performance in Kagurazaka which was the birthplace of Edo Utsushie.
In Shibuya’s version, I collaborated with Sayuri Iimori, a contemporary dancer, and her performance in front of circle shaped screen in the UPLINK factory was shot by a fixed camera, and broadcasted through live streaming to the outside which Taki projected that image on the street wall. And, those outside projections were shot to deliver to the project on the screen in the theater room where Iimori danced. In this little complicated structure, the audience in the theater watched both live performances and broadcasted projection images on the street as a film screening, audience on the street watched Iimori’s activities on the building facade and the physical projectionists' movement at the same time.So, this performance provided two different appreciative experiments.
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| Performance in Kyoto, left, in Surabaya, middle, in Shikinejima, right |
Except version in Kyoto and Surabaya, In Clearmont-Ferrand, Taipei, and Shikinejima, I projected images of not only me but also other performers and mixed several people trying to climb up on the buildings and the walls. (I used a car battery connected to a car as a power supply in Clermont-Ferrand) For Yokohama’s performance, I prepared not a looped video source but a 30-minute video source where I acted to climb or to move horizontally way, which was shot by the camera set on the ceiling for the same duration as the performance on the street. So, in several scenes where I seemed to be tired and took a rest, I was really exhausted by acting in that shooting.
The main purpose of this mobile performance was to hybrid image of the body and urban space. What made me feel it so interesting was the physical transportation of the author with a projector and battery on his back, at the same time, various superhuman-like movements of his body double in projection video by climbing unusual high places and getting into physically non-intrudable space and he has also physical fatigue. The body double of the protagonist has been always the eternal theme of moving images since cinema was invented. Before the cinema, they say that people loved phantasmagoria, a magic lantern show that visualized famous people who were not able to be there, or a spirit rapping show with the dead person. After my death, someone can project the image of Kentaro Taki climbing up the building somewhere in the future. The body double lives longer than the original in this media society. Same as the first performance in Kagurazaka, even in Yokohama, my main and best audience was children. They stuck to me in the front line, and they were glad and shouted to look at where the body double climbed. Someone told me that this performance was similar to the story of Pied Piper. The audience didn’t know where they would be guided, they had no specific goal, so it looked like Pied Piper’s
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| Performance on the street of Clermont-Ferrand（photo: La Montagne） |
During this performance, I had a lot of things to do. I had to change the image size of the projection by an adjustor, to focus the image, and to consider where to project and how to move to the next spot by inspecting the structure and the color of buildings. Because the pre-recorded video source had an upper and a downside and showed the figure’s head came to the upper side. So when I projected him on a pillar, the ceiling of the train bridge, or a temporal partition wall for example, I tried to adjust it just like he seemed to climb up/down on them, by changing the angle of the projector itself, tilted it, and sometimes I had to re-hold it to be turned image in 180 degrees smoothly. As body-double of me really existed and he moved with his will freely to go various places, I made an effort to manipulate the projector. Also pre-recorded video also sounded like shortness of breath when I acted, and during recording, I could not know where my image would be projected. (The sound was from a parametric speaker and reflected on the wall to the audience.) So, when I projected that image in my performance, I added my shout to direct that he might fail to climb up with obstacle objects around him and his projected area.
The funniest moments of this performance were when I projected and moved an image of my body double on somewhere usually nobody paid any attention, however audience looked upon and gazed at such a place because of the projection. There are so many unexpected and encountered objects and structures in our urban space, such as the concrete structures of the high-leveled train lines, the outdoor unit of air conditioners, ducts, electric pole, equipment for traffic and construction, and their signs with numbers... Once the body double of the artist was projected on these usually ignored objects and structures, people see the projected person and unseen objects at the same time. At this moment, my mind was simulating the intention of projecting otherself, and I felt that I could combine myself with walls and buildings. Thus, the author controlled his body double image as a puppet or the projected object, The urban surface guided the author, there was no clear border between them but a certain gameplay relation. This performance started as the assignment of how we could get out from the frame of video/ moving image of the electric image as our ancestors, experimental and structural film pioneers deviated which I mentioned above.
Essentially film needs a dark room and moving images after video’s invention had been basically on display inside of the room. On the other hand, many modernized tools and technologies as smartphones or digital signage don’t need darkness anymore but we still cannot escape from the frame of flat squares except by touching them, even in the era we can take them away from the room to the outside it. Thus, we are entering a time in “we shut ourselves even we are outside”.
As well as these issues on the regulation of media and field, it was another situation when we had to be blocked and in a kind of house arrest during years of pandemic, which concerned with the idea of my performance. It was why I reconsidered doing this performance again, that I felt my desire to be liberated from life by just facing the virtual world of the web, with connecting cables all the time, to jump out to the real public space after getting better of the COVID-19 situation. That action was to correspond to the questions of how to identify myself out there, how to face urban elements, and whether I could disclose myself there. This performance was for me a kind of unplugged and improvisational piece of video artwork, which was totally different from my other single-channel video pieces.
We had about 30 audiences for the first time, and more than 60 for the second time in Yokohama, this time. During my performance, you can take your position wherever you like, you can see my body double by projection or physical author who works and operates so hard in front of you. You can go to see other exhibitions on the way to it, or it is another sweet occasion that you become an On-the-Road watcher and are left from other audience groups. Since I didn’t expect so many audiences I could have, but it was great thankful that the staff of KAMC guided them not to get off the car road or not to be interrupted by the other transportation concerning safety. The audience tried to follow the performer for 30 minutes (or even gave up doing it), and they could share an appreciation of physical movement and spatial transfer, which were different from the cinema by sitting and the museum by guided walking. Also, we had some coincidental audience who just passed by me, they immediately shot mobile phones to understand what appeared suddenly and what was going on in their daily space.
When I had the premiere mobile performance in Kagurazaka, I was 42 years old, and this time I was 50 years old. It was much harder physically to act for half an hour shooting alone upon greenback than the same time span to demonstrate it on the street in front of the audience. However, I’d like to have another chance to do it while my physical condition is being OK.
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